His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI announced it through the Vatican, to shock and surprise. A poised Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands revealed it in a video uploaded to YouTube, and King Juan Carlos of Spain confirmed it by signing a parliamentary bill. Queen Elizabeth, however, has vowed that abdicate is something she will never do. Abdication is, after all, a dirty word in the corridors of Royal palaces, especially after the earthquake caused when her uncle Edward VIII quit the throne in 1936 to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson. And there is no indication that that will ever change. Yet

Let´s hope she doesn´t abdicate. Let´s not forget her pledge on her 21st birthday: "I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong."

Her Majesty will not abdicate and the Prince of Wales, via the Regency Act, could take her place in performing the duties of state. However, the idea of the queen passing the crown to Prince William is absurd. The British Constitution controls the line of accession, not the queen.

I rather suspect that what she is doing is making sure that Charles and William are getting the benefit of her vast store of experience and knowledge. She has a lot of wisdom to pass on to those two, and I hope they both are listening and taking full advantage of her advice while she is still breathing.

One thing we have learned about this lovely lady is that she keeps her word when she gives it. She promised her nation that she would serve it her WHOLE life. Not just until it gets a bit uncomfortable. But her WHOLE life. Letting Charles and William pick up the slack is just wise strategy on her part. This way the Commonwealth also gets to know them too.

Sorry for the second post, but believe it or not, it is Parliament who decides if Charles gets to be King. He is in line, and they have never gone against tradition regarding the succession, BUT it is Parliament who has the final approval. So if William gets the nod instead of his father, there could be some very interesting times ahead in the United Kingdom.

The woman is 91 years old, with an ailing husband. A Regency makes good sense, allowing her to remain queen, avoiding abdication, while putting Charles is an apprentice-type position to either make good or prove incompetent as the de facto head of state. A Regency can be revoked.

I am not anti-monarchy particularly but as an American I don´t get what difference it makes who has the royal title. What power do any of them have in real terms? Even just reading about the meanings of the various gaudy medals on Charles´ dress uniform is evidence of irrelevance (he mainly possesses medals for being alive when historical milestones were passed). It looks as if skipping over Charles to the Bill Windsors would make better copy for tabloids and make walkabouts more exciting for grandmothers and children. Other than that I can´t discern any relevance. And I´m not so sure the Pakistanis or Indians or sub-Saharan Africans who are now counted as "British" care for their leadership either.

Charles has been in an active apprenticeship to take the reins for quite some time now. He is quite well-prepared for what is ahead of him. Also, #12 makes good points which are increasingly not lost on many Brits who also would not consider themselves anti-monarchy at all. The way my Queen Elizabeth-revering Yorkshire relatives feel is that once she is gone, its high time to modernize the whole system. In days past, the monarchy provided a stability BUT that worked because there was common language, Christian values and shared proud English culture. Millions of third world peoples have changed England´s demographics.

Officials have confirmed at least 13 people have died and 80 have been injured after a van mounted a pavement in Barcelona. It follows what the country´s Department of the Interior described as "a massive trampling on the Ramblas in Barcelona by a person with a van". Shortly after the crash the Interior confirmed it as a "terrorist attack", the department tweeted: "The terrorist attack protocol has been activated". So-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack. A couple of hours after the attack the Interior ministry dismissed early reports that suspects being sought in connection with the attack had been holed

Fox News host Eboni K Williams has received death threats by email after criticizing Donald Trump´s remarks on Monday. Speaking during Eboni´s Docket, her opinion slot on Fox News Specialists, Williams complained that Trump´s attempts to blame both white supremacists and antifascist protesters as equally bad was ´cowardly and dangerous´. Since then, she has received a slew of emails so vicious that Fox has hired a security detail to follow her to work, Variety reported. Williams derided Trump´s initial response to the death of Heather Heyer - a 32-year-old woman knocked down and killed when a white supremacist drove into a crowd

He was not supposed to be back until Thursday, but President Trump’s Thursday afternoon may have been too much for Joe Scarborough as he returned to air a day early. The Morning Joe host beamed in to co-anchor his namesake show from what appeared to be a living room in Maine to denounce the Commander-in-Chief after the comments he made during his Trump Tower press conference on Tuesday. ´He has now officially become the president of the white nationalist movement,´ said Scarborough. ´The president has chosen sides, and it is very clear. Not only morally, but also politically.´ Scarborough then added: ´He has chosen

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is a marked man, according to news reports and sources inside the West Wing who see the nationalist Trump-whisperer´s political hourglass quickly losing sand. CBS News reported Monday night that the axe could fall as soon as Friday on the man credited with arranging the president´s marriage to millions of angry white working-class voters last year. The former Breitbart News executive chairman was once an equal partner in a ruling triumvirate of deputies that included Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. But Priebus´s star ran out of fuel last month. And his successor

North Korea´s leader has pulled back from a ordering missile strike just off the US territory of Guam but warned that he could still go ahead if Washington continues with "reckless actions" on the Korean peninsula. Kim Jong-un was briefed by military chiefs on its plans to create "enveloping fire" by setting off rockets into the waters a few miles off the American military hub in the Pacific. News agencies quoted him as saying he would observe the "foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees" a little more before deciding whether to order a test launch. His decision to hold fire - at

A Methodist pastor who has been Hillary Clinton’s minister for years plagiarized the writings of another minister in a new book, it was reported on Monday. Rev. Bill Shillady is the author of a new book, Strong for a Moment Like This: The Daily Devotions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The book is based on emails that Shillady wrote to Clinton during the presidential campaign. Clinton even appears on the cover of the book and she even wrote a foreword praising the minister. While the book includes 11 pages of end notes crediting source material, Shillady fails to credit another source, a blog post by

Hillary Clinton´s personal pastor compared her treatment to the persecution of Jesus in a devotional sent to her during the Presidential campaign - and victor Donald Trump to the ´wicked´. The former Democratic candidate took comfort from the words of Rev Bill Shillady who told her that ´blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness´. Rev Shillady referred her to Matthew 5:10-12 which says that the reward for such ill treatment on Earth was going to Heaven when she died. The remarks were among the daily devotionals sent by Rev Shillady to Clinton during her failed campaign against Donald Trump. In the foreword

President Donald Trump insisted on Monday that he and his administration forcefully denounce the ´evil´ embodied by white supremacists and other bigoted hate groups whose weekend rally in Virginia left one woman dead and 20 others injured. ´Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,´ the president said at the White House. ´We are a nation founded on the truth that all of us are created equal. We are equal in the eyes of our

The only black member of President Trump´s American Manufacturing Council quit on Monday over the president´s response to the violence in Charlottesville, calling on American leaders to clearly reject ´expressions of hatred,bigotry and group supremacy.´ Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Merck, bowed out of the board, saying it was a ´matter of personal conscience´ that he take a ´stand against intolerance and extremism.´ President Trump quickly hit back on Twitter, writing, ´Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President´s Manufacturing Council,he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!´

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci – also known as ´the Mooch´ – was critical of President Trump´s response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. ´With the moral authority of the presidency, you have to call that stuff out,´ Scaramucci told ABC News´ George Stephanopoulos during his first post-White House interview, airing Sunday morning on This Week. On Saturday, Trump condemned hate ´on many sides,´ which many, including a number of Republicans, interpreted as Trump equating the white supremacists with the counter-protesters, of which one was killed. ´I wouldn´t have recommended that statement,´ said Scaramucci, who held his White House position

A new report suggests the DNC hack, one of several that rocked the 2016 presidential election, was an inside job. According to The Nation, forensic experts and four former NSA employees claim to have new evidence that the Democratic National Committee hack happened locally with a memory key or other portable storage device. The experts speaking to The Nation argue the files were too large to have been transmitted over the internet, therefore they must have happened on site, by someone within the DNC. The Nation´s article reads: ´The volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI announced it through the Vatican, to shock and surprise. A poised Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands revealed it in a video uploaded to YouTube, and King Juan Carlos of Spain confirmed it by signing a parliamentary bill. Queen Elizabeth, however, has vowed that abdicate is something she will never do. Abdication is, after all, a dirty word in the corridors of Royal palaces, especially after the earthquake caused when her uncle Edward VIII quit the throne in 1936 to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson. And there is no indication that that will ever change. Yet

Fox News´s Kat Timpf slammed President Trump on Tuesday for his "disgusting" press conference in which he again blamed "both sides" for the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend, stepping back from his direct condemnation of white supremacist groups a day earlier. "It was one of the biggest messes I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe it happened," said Timpf, a co-host of “The Fox News Specialists.” “It is honestly crazy for me to have to comment on this right now because I’m still in the phase where I am wondering if it was actually real life —

Evidence is turning up from, of all places, the Southern Poverty Law Center, as well as Breitbart and others, that this character, Jason Kessler, who organized the suspicious and supposed Alt-Right demonstration in Charlottesville, Va. that blew up in everyone´s face, is a cunning lefty holdover from the Occupy Wall Street movement and a former Barack Obama supporter. I smell Soros money, sabotage, and Democrat dirty tricks here. I´ve been suspicious of the nature of the violence at this supposed Alt-Right demonstration since the news first began breaking. It is no secret that radical elements in the Democrat left have

A crowd of ignorant protesters pulled down a bronze Confederate statue that stood before a county government building in Durham, North Carolina — the angry national backlash to the Charlottesville brouhaha over the Robert E. Lee monument. This is not how civil societies operate. And yet this is what the left has brought, and now cheers. What’s next — burning books with offensive content? Burning books written by those who used to own slaves? At the very least, museums will have to go. The problem with revising history based on a standard of “feeling offensive” — as this anti-Confederate craze is rooted — is that someone,

President Trump should have left well enough alone. His Monday denunciation of costumed sheet-wearers and Nazi wanna-bes could have cleared the way for Americans of all stripes to focus their outrage on things that matter more than presidential words. That would be the violence that is infecting our politics and the frightening acceptance of it as the new normal. But Trump’s defiance yesterday is sure to keep the media pot boiling over his rhetoric instead of an ominous reality. Namely, that real protestors don’t carry baseball bats, crowbars and mace. Yet Saturday’s bloody clash in Charlottesville showed that many on

Former presidential candidate and current Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich may be moving closer to mounting a primary challenge against President Trump in the 2020 election. Sources close to Kasich told Willie Geist of the "Today Show" there is growing a sense of "moral imperative" to run against Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020 following his controversial statements on the deadly protest in Charlottesville, Va. (Tweet) Kasich has long been critical of Trump. On Tuesday, Kasich criticized Trump´s Charlottesville comments, saying "there is no moral equivalency to Nazi sympathizers" following Trump´s tumultuous press conference. Kasich, who lost to Trump

Trump ignited a political firestorm yesterday during an impromptu press conference in which he said there was "blame on both sides" for the tragic events that occurred in Charlottesville over the weekend. Now, the discovery of a craigslist ad posted last Monday, almost a full week before the Charlottesville protests, is raising new questions over whether paid protesters were sourced by a Los Angeles based "public relations firm specializing in innovative events" to serve as agitators in counterprotests. The ad was posted by a company called "Crowds on Demand" and offered $25 per hour to "actors and photographers"

CNN host Wolf Blitzer said Thursday there would be questions if the Barcelona terror attack involving a van crashing into a group of people was a "copycat" of what happened in Charlottesville, Va. At least 13 people were killed and more than 50 were injured in Barcelona on Thursday when men rammed their van into a crowd of pedestrians at Las Ramblas, a popular tourism area in the city in northeastern Spain. The attack came five days after a man with white supremacist group ties was arrested for driving his car into a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, killing one

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has weighed in on the weekend´s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, castigating Donald Trump without naming him. ´We can have no tolerance for an ideology of racial hatred. There are no good neo-nazis,´ McConnell said in a statement. The choice of words, while careful, appeared to push back against Trump´s claim on Tuesday that some ´very fine people´ were among a crowd of white supremacists who rallied in the college town. McConnell´s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, stood next to Trump on Tuesday as he insisted both sides of the weekend´s clash bore some responsibility for

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned President Trump on Wednesday that his “words are dividing Americans, not healing them” in the wake of the bloody clashes in Virginia that has sparked a national conversation about white supremacists and race. Mr. Graham also vowed that Republicans will “fight back against the idea that the party of Lincoln has a welcome mat out for the David Dukes of the world.” “Through his statements yesterday, President Trump took a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist neo-Nazis and KKK members who attended the Charlottesville rally and people like

As James Bond’s nemesis Auric Goldfinger famously observed, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.” On Tuesday evening, three prominent Republicans — Senator John McCain, Senator Marco Rubio, and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney — endorsed the left-wing media’s preferred narrative and embraced the masked thugs of Antifa as heroes. McCain and Romney used almost identical language, bending their knees to the media narrative that only two factions were present in Charlottesville during the awful events of last weekend: white supremacist Nazis and “Americans standing up to defy hate and bigotry.”

In the midst of the maelstrom of breaking news of the past several days, the outlines of a big story affecting the future of the Fox News Channel are beginning to emerge. They involve a major makeover of Fox News´s ailing prime-time schedule and a rising new star, Eboni K. Williams. After the dust settles, Williams, whose current show, The Fox News Specialists, looks as though it´s headed for oblivion after the coming shake-up, may wind up on the fast track to cable news stardom.On Monday, August 14, Matt Drudge let the cat out of the bag, as he occasionally

NEW YORK- They wash their hands of neo-Nazis and wag their fingers at leftists. They denounce a press corps they see as biased and controversies they view as manufactured. But in the frenzied blame game over the deadly violence at a rally of white supremacists, Donald Trump´s loyal base is happy to absolve the president himself. Even as Trump´s zig-zag response to the weekend bloodshed in Charlottesville, Virginia, has brought criticism from some Republican lawmakers, many men and women who helped put him in office remain unmoved by the latest uproar. "He has done nothing to turn me away from